Officials slam grid operator as millions remain without power

ERCOT CEO Bill Magness said his company averted a total disaster.

“I think from the perspective of the grid collapsing, I think what has happened here is a response that kept the grid from collapsing, that kept us from going into a blackout condition,” he said. “Now the difficulties that this has imposed on the citizens of Texas, everybody in the state, have been enormous.”

Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, US Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee and the Texas speaker of the house were among those calling for a look into how ERCOT dealt with the storm.

Abbott said he wants an investigation and swift reform of the system.

“The Electric Reliability Council of Texas has been anything but reliable over the past 48 hours,” Abbott said in a statement. “Far too many Texans are without power and heat for their homes as our state faces freezing temperatures and severe winter weather. This is unacceptable.”

Responding to the governor, Magness said the company sees the need for an investigation.

“Electricity is an essential service,” said Magness. “As we do the event analysis after this is over, once we get through the emergency and we get customers back on, we want to participate in that, we want to learn lessons, because if, you know, there’s mistakes that we can be correcting, you want to find them, and we want to put the processes in to correct them.”

Galveston County Judge Mark Henry said ERCOT officials were less than forthcoming with information ahead of the deadly storm that has left much of his county battling power outages and freezing temperatures.

“We were told Sunday afternoon in a message that there’ll be rolling blackouts, about up to an hour off, and then up to three to four hours on,” he said. “That was fine. That didn’t happen. The power went off, it stayed off. We had no rolling blackouts at all in this county.”

He said county officials would have made different decisions, including calling for people to evacuate, if they had been told the power was going to stay off.

Three die in carbon monoxide incidents

Another person died in Fort Worth from a carbon monoxide incident, according to fire officials there.

Treacherous weather conditions have led to more than 550 car crashes in the area since Sunday, Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo said.

Huge electricity demand

Up to 6 more inches of snow could fall in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, while freezing rain is forecast for Austin, San Antonio and Houston.

“We’re looking at some more rain and sleet tonight,” San Antonio Fire Chief Charles Hood said. “This could be the worst night as far as temperature.”

Hood said his department has had a rough week with the storm, “We had 2,608 calls for service yesterday. We did about four times the number of calls we do on a normal day.”

A truck braves the frozen roads in Houston on Monday, February 15.

Relying on fireplaces and generators

Barbara Martinez had a mission Tuesday that she wouldn’t normally undertake: find more wood for the fireplace that has become her home’s main source of heat in freezing weather.

Her home in the Houston suburb of Jersey Village has been largely without power since Sunday at 3 a.m., she told CNN.

She, her elderly parents, and her two dogs have been huddled together in one room with a fireplace.

“We have several layers of clothing and it’s cold,” Martinez said. “We’ve been using our cars to charge up phones, and (the) signal here is nearly impossible to use.”

“We hope the power comes back soon because we are running out of firewood,” she said. “My goal today is to find more firewood.”

Barbara Martinez’s father sits in front of the fireplace at her home in a Houston suburb.

In the Fort Worth suburb of Watauga, Elijah Dorminy’s family has depended on their generator to make it through the deadly cold — and he fears that soon even that won’t be an option.

Dorminy, his wife and their four children were worried what will happen when they need to refill their generator with gas again. Only one gas station still had fuel in Watauga, Dorminy told CNN on Monday evening.

“Pray for us, this is going to be rough,” he told CNN.

Water shut off in Abilene, and cell phone service interrupted outside Houston

The city of Abilene said it was forced to shut off water service Monday evening because of a power outage at three water treatment plants.

The city of about 120,000 people is about a 150-mile drive west of Fort Worth.

When service is restored, a boil water notice will be in effect, and customers should bring water to a vigorous boil for at least two minutes before consumption, according to the statement.

“Texans with electricity are asked to conserve as much as possible in an effort to relieve the demand on the state’s power grid and help restore service,” the city said.

In Waco, Mayor Dillon Meek said the city would rent 15 hotel rooms for homeless people.

Covid-19 vaccines and appointments at risk

The storm has complicated Covid-19 vaccinations, causing appointments to be postponed and threatening supplies.

“With the current icy conditions expected to remain until at least tomorrow, we want to ensure the safety of the public. We also want to remind the public who may be concerned about the small delay for their second dose, that we are still within CDC guidelines to ensure the vaccine will still work with no issues,” the release stated.

After power was lost at the Harris County Public Health building and backup generators failed, officials had to race to allocate and save 8,400 vaccines before they spoiled, Hidalgo, the county judge, said Monday.

Harris County officials settled on Houston’s Ben Taub, Lyndon B. Johnson and Houston Methodist Hospitals, as well as Rice University and the Harris County Jail as the locations to receive the vaccine overnight, Hidalgo said.